Just before the first harvest boxes

Lisa trims spinach with Mt. Hood in the background. The Sylvanberries are blooming like crazy on the row behind her.

My dear friend, Mary, with the wide brimmed hat, chats with my niece in law, Stephanie. The colorful tall lupine spires sway in the breeze. A beautiful day at The Farm.

Stephanie keeps one eye and ear on her little one sitting at the child's picnic table.

She crashed a few minutes before as she was toddling on the gravel road. Bumped her forehead, but picked herself up and kept going. Tough kiddo!

Niece Anna (who lives at The Farm) and her sister in law, Stephanie, marvel over some of the very early harvest today. 

Cucumbers they picked from the greenhouse plants. 

Asparagus needs to be picked regularly or it will turn into asparagus ferns.

Colorful Swiss Chard. So tender this time of year.

Mary seeds broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and sunflowers today. One seed per cell in these 50 cell flats. She is good at this!

Gravel gets delivered for The Farm.

Sylvanberries are blooming like crazy. Each flower has the potential to turn into a berry. Hopefully there will be enough pollinators in the area for all these flowers. It was a hard winter on our bee hives.

A decorative allium sparkles in the sunlight. So many little flowers make up the beautiful ball-like flower.

A pink peony catches the sunlight.

Painted daisies look happy.

Some stems bend more than others. Sweet peas will be climbing up the weathered wall in the background sometime soon.

Tilling in the evening sun next to the third and fourth plantings of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. Drip tape is in place under each row.

Florencio drives the tractor as it rolls out drip tape under the plastic mulch and then buries the edges under the soil. The black plastic will increase the warmth of the soil for watermelons, cantaloupes, zucchini, yellow crookneck, patty pan squash and cucumbers. 

Here are the four rows of red plastic mulch. Tomatoes produce better with sunlight reflecting off of the color red. Our 31 varieties of tomatoes will be planted here.

The contraption on the back of the tractor is quite ingenious. It does everything except automatically drive in a straight line. It does roll out drip tape, dig trenches to bury the plastic on both sides, and then covers up both sides. All at one time. 

The many colors of Swiss Chard. Orange.

Magenta.

Yellow.

White cauliflower peaks out from its protective leaves.

Purple Sicily cauliflower. The white little stripe was from a little leaf hiding the cauliflower from light. You might see the little leaf standing upright.

The first cabbage.

Broccoli is actually a lot of tiny flower buds. If they open they will be yellow and are also edible. They are wonderful in salads. And yes, they also taste like a mild broccoli.

After the middle and largest head of broccoli has been cut, many will produce side shoots like these.

Two colors of kale are loving this weather.

  

Peas the rabbit hasn't found, yet.

A different variety of peas.

Purple blooming peas, a third variety. 

Radishes push their way upward.

Cilantro going to seed. The flowers turn into the seeds which are called coriander. They look like little round basketballs.

Additional broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage starts are planted outside the raised beds. The earliest ones need to be planted in the raised beds due to the excess moisture in the late winter, early spring soil.

Colorful lettuce. Some have smooth leaves, some are bumpy, they catch more salad dressing :)

Celery is growing, too.

A beautiful, tender bed of Swiss Chard. 

Red beets are putting on size. They should be just right for the first harvest boxes.

Two kinds of spinach.

The Sylvan berries are turning from flowers to green berries. It looks like we should have a pretty good harvest.

A view down the row.

The Waldo berries are a later maturing berry. They are mostly still in flower stage.

There are advantages to opening up new ground for additional space like we did here for the onions. But the disadvantage, all those weeds seeds that have been turned up are now enjoying life. Lots of hand weeding to do.

Between the posts are different types of radishes.

Florencio and our Dad discovered a different use for a clam gun. Digging holes through the plastic without cutting the drip tape underneath. Tomatoes will be planted here tomorrow (May 21st).

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Florencio's son looks on this evening as the sun is starting to set. Some days are long on The Farm.

Last year we planted one SINGLE row of strawberries along the left side of these beds. They have grown and spread tremendously.

When picking up harvest boxes, there is parking right where this photo was taken. Boxes will be picked up in the blue roofed, potting shed. Some of the lavender and rosemary plants in the foreground didn't survive this past winter. Multiple days of very cold weather did them in. On the other hand, the peonies are happily blooming.

Fun Work Day

     I must admit that every day we are out at The Farm is fun. The "work" is something we love. One of the best perks is hanging out with family and sometimes good friends who also like this type of  "work".  Dad would have loved to sit with us, he would have been grinning a lot.

     This blog is about a friends and family work day and the great food that Anna and Lisa are coming up with as they try out possible recipes for our CSA harvest box flyers. Each week Lisa comes up with a flyer for the box with recipes and suggested uses for what is in the box that week. We usually are the chefs' guinea pigs (lucky us, my sister and niece can COOK).

My niece Angie shows off her own measuring tape! My sister Lisa, in blue, and a dear friend, Jane in white, transplant petunias into 4 inch pots.

Jane digs in. And yes, she wore white to work in.

Showing off AGAIN! Yes, we use power tools, too. Notice my husband's chop saw in the background. 

So proud of that measuring tape!  Didn't I say we have fun? :)

Another friend, Laurie, who used to teach American Sign Language at Sprague with me, uses her very own nail gun to help build peony cages. The peony blossoms get heavy with rain and end up on the ground and in the dirt. This way, they will stay clean for the weekly bouquets. We hope.

Yes, that's her power tool for the day! She is a wood worker and has a plethora of power tools. We thought it was neat that the little kiddos saw all of us working with power tools and building things. And of course it was fun. They spent much of their time on the swing set right behind Laurie under Mom's curly willow tree.

Lisa and Anna's creation. Oh, my, gosh. So delicious. Asparagus, bacon, onion, garlic, cheese, eggs, Lisa's "from scratch" crust, which is always very tender and delicate.  YUM.

The second quiche was made with Swiss Cheese and asparagus. so delicate and very flavorful. You could roll it around in your mouth and savor it forever. And a fresh fruit salad, too. Over to the far right, homemade sandwich cookies. Lemonade to quench your thirst.

Lunch is served. Hats for almost everyone. Sunscreen on the table. Such a wonderful time to chat and tell stories. And of course sample all the wonderful food. Large sun hat wearer is "Other Mary" sitting next to the visor lady, my mother-in-law Mary, or Grams. I am sitting behind Grams with my new purple sun hat. 

Anna, my niece is to the right sitting at the child picnic table. She lives here at The Farm with her husband and their three little ones. The blue roofed building in the background is where our Mom potted up plants and hung her flowers to dry. Therefore, Lisa and I call it the Potting Shed. 

After our wonderful lunch break, Laurie built the peony cage in the top left. Lisa had requested another cage for the now short Baby's Breath. So Laurie is finishing this one up. In years past, these short plants have grown so large they have covered both of the walkways. Hopefully this new cage will help them stay up and clean and allow us to use the walkways.

The last nail for the day. A job well done!

The following are a few photos of the spring flowering plants at The Farm. By the time most people come out to pick up their harvest boxes many of these will be bloomed out. Just a glimpse of the springtime beauty Mom and Dad left behind for us to enjoy.

Mom always said "put white in your garden and it will make your other colors pop".  I think she may have been on to something.

Ferns to the right add texture.

Perennial yellow alyssum adds to the blues and whites and greens.

 Mom liked the movement the ornamental grasses added to the garden. Rhododendrons by the chimney. These raised beds were for the herb nursery she had along with scented geraniums and fuchsias. Her nursery was named "Sweetbriar".

Pink Columbine in the foreground alongside the tall green Lovage that looks like overgrown celery (they are in the same family). Variegated irises are near the peonies with their new cage.